no one said this would be easy
by die by thirty
Summary: Lives can be beautiful. And the beauty can die so easily. GaLe/Twin Dragon Slayer Paradox


AN: This is for the lawyers: I don't own Fairy Tail, and am in no way using this for monetary gain. Thank you very much.  
This is a sort of almost prequel of my previous fic.

* * *

**mid ka mid**

He always woke first, just before the sun. He'd watch as shadows and light played out gently on her bare skin, dancing on her pale spine, dipping into the deep curves of her shoulder bones. Beneath their soft fortress of blankets, he'd pull her closer to his chest, tucking his head in the slim curve of her neck, twitching as her hair, curling long and blue, draped in ivy-like strands across his cheek.  
And it was still striking to him, a bolt of electric that made him stand still, take his new life in. He'd never imagined this. Never could of ever dreamed of this; of Levy, heart beating in tune with his as she slept on, or the matching silver rings on their fingers and the slight bump beneath Levy's nightdress that promised a future better than this present.  
He was happy.

**mbili**

She always woke last, as much as it frustrated her. She'd wake to his calloused fingers running through her hair or, as she was now, to the smell of black coffee wafting into their bedroom from the kitchen. It had become a habit, she supposed, sleeping till the sun illuminated the darkness behind her eyelids. As much as a part of life as the crow-haired man who held her tightly every night and being a member of Fairy Tail. She yawned long, stretched her arms above her head.  
A glance at the alarm clock next to the lamp told her it was just before noon, and she groaned, flopping back into the coziness of her chenille blankets, the cloth beneath her fingertips patterned in rusty hues. She huffed, upset that Gajeel had let her sleep in so late, and stole his pillows as revenge. She glared at the lamp then, brown eyes tracing the weaved designs of the shade.  
It was a frilly thing, the lamp, something she'd picked off the shelf when they'd first gotten married. Gajeel had protested heartily against the rose-covered porcelain-l_ike something straight out of a granny's rear end_\- but they'd come to a compromise, like they'd always done. The house they shared was proof of it: a trove of nearly all things metal-studded and hardbound ink-on-paper.  
They'd have to clear some of the hoard away, though.  
She rubbed a hand across her belly, and threw aside the blankets.  
It wasn't just the two of them anymore.

**három**

He left.  
On a mission.  
It was only supposed to last two days and it had been two weeks, so she fretted and woke up early everyday to him gone. She pulled a muscle the fifth day he was gone -_five days, seven hours, eleven minutes-_\- looking for him, and was banished to bed-rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. She threw all the blankets off her bed in a fit, and then barely moved, sluggish and tired and just waiting for some hope or some news.  
Lucy stopped in at least once every day, managed to get her friend to eat a small amount, but mostly Levy was by herself, in their little home in the woods, resting and missing him as a second heartbeat thumped softly after hers.  
The sun was going down, and she watched it from her place beside the window.  
_Thump thump thump._  
It twisted its reds slowly through the blue, overtaking the soft sky with tendrils the color of blood.  
_Thump thump_.  
The sun burned into her eyes, a blinding white rimmed in orange and red, and she closed her eyes against it_.  
Thump thump thump.  
Thump thump.  
_The baby shifted in her, and Levy tried to soothe her child, rubbing slow circles across her belly.  
_  
"Do you miss him too?"  
_

She was kicked in response, and she smiled. It surprised her, the too-easy pulling of muscles upward, and she realized she hadn't smiled in ten days.

"_You're not standing for that, are you, little one?_"

She was kicked again, and she leaned back against her chair, sighing, and turned her eyes to the darkening .

"We never did name you, did we? It should be a big, strong name, but lovely too. Audrey, maybe, if you're a girl. Or something like Briana."

The baby wriggled and wormed around uncomfortably, and then finally relaxed as the sky became a star-studded night-blue. Out here, in the forest, she could see the star better than she had ever could living in the city, and ticked off the constellations in her head.

_Draco. Cepheus. Camelopardalis. Cassiopeia. Andromeda. Both Ursas. Perseus. Aries._

There was a possibility that Gajeel was no longer beneath these skies.  
She refused to believe it.

**štyri**

Gajeel came home.  
He was sixteen days, twenty hours, three minutes and forty-seven seconds late.  
He came home, and held Levy as she wept silently, trembling with her arms around his neck. He smelled of iron and woodchips and a hazy lingering of smoke and he was _real_.  
He was real.  
She could feel him again, a physicality of muscles and bone and reality, and her tears ended up soaking a portion of his shirt.  
She kissed him, too rough and hard it made their teeth click, and when they parted again they struggled for breath, hazel eyes looking into red ones.

"_Don't_ ever _scare me like that again_."

"..._Sure thing_."

**e rima**

The world went to hell a little after they were reunited.  
And that's how their son was born, in ashes and blood and the screaming of dragons.  
They named him Astraios, to be a little light in the huge darkness, and Levy screamed into her scarred hands as her little light vanished through the portal, sending him to live a life better than the one he was born to.

**sé**

She always woke first, even though they both slept restlessly or not at all. They lived in a small cave, curved into the side of a mountain, and every morning they had the perfect view of a world coated in grey.  
She coughed specks of blood into her sleeve, and then whispered with what little strength she had.

"_I love you_."

She was breakable now, sickly.  
They (_that word was so strange now, with just the two of them_) were childless parents, friendless friends, scraps of people.  
All they had left was words.

* * *

AN: Do you hate me yet? I don't understand what happened to my brain. This was supposed to be _happy_, and then bloop, Twin Dragon Slayer Paradox.


End file.
